aid: chicago-transit-authority name: Chicago Transit Authority kind: government description: >- The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is the public transit operator for the City of Chicago and 35 surrounding suburbs, operating the second largest public transit system in the United States with bus and rapid-transit (L) train services. The CTA Developer Center publishes open transit data feeds and APIs for developers building rider-facing applications, including the Train Tracker API for real-time L-train arrivals, the Bus Tracker API for real-time bus arrivals and vehicle locations, the Customer Alerts API for service status and disruptions, and GTFS schedule data feeds for the entire CTA bus and rail network. type: Index position: Consumer access: 3rd-Party image: https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/chicago-transit-authority/refs/heads/main/apis.yml tags: - Bus - Bus Tracker - Chicago - CTA - Customer Alerts - GTFS - L Train - Open Data - Public Transit - Real-Time - Train - Train Tracker - Transit - Transportation created: '2025-05-02' modified: '2026-05-19' specificationVersion: '0.20' apis: - aid: chicago-transit-authority:train-tracker-api name: CTA Train Tracker API description: >- The Train Tracker API provides real-time train arrival predictions and run/location information for all CTA L train lines. Endpoints include arrival predictions by station or stop, follow-this-train run tracking, and a locations service exposing the current latitude/longitude of in-service trains. Authentication requires a developer API key issued through the CTA Developer Center. image: https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg humanURL: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/traintracker/ baseURL: http://lapi.transitchicago.com/api/1.0 tags: - L Train - Real-Time - Train Tracker - Transit properties: - type: Documentation url: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/traintracker/ - type: APIDocs url: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/ttdocs/ - type: APIKeyApplication url: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/traintrackerapply/ - type: TermsOfUse url: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/terms/ - type: OpenAPI url: openapi/cta-train-tracker-openapi.yml - type: Spectral url: spectral/chicago-transit-authority-spectral.yml - aid: chicago-transit-authority:bus-tracker-api name: CTA Bus Tracker API description: >- The Bus Tracker API series provides real-time bus arrival predictions, vehicle locations, route patterns, route lists, and stop directories for the CTA bus network. Endpoints support route, stop, and vehicle-based queries returning JSON or XML. Authentication requires a developer API key issued through the CTA Developer Center. image: https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg humanURL: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/bustracker/ baseURL: http://www.ctabustracker.com/bustime/api/v2 tags: - Bus - Bus Tracker - Real-Time - Transit properties: - type: Documentation url: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/bustracker/ - type: TermsOfUse url: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/terms/ - type: OpenAPI url: openapi/cta-bus-tracker-openapi.yml - aid: chicago-transit-authority:customer-alerts-api name: CTA Customer Alerts API description: >- The Customer Alerts API delivers real-time service status, planned outages, and disruption information for CTA bus and rail services. It provides both a route-level status feed and per-route or per-station detail. Authentication is not required for the public Customer Alerts feeds. image: https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg humanURL: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/alerts/ baseURL: http://www.transitchicago.com/api/1.0 tags: - Customer Alerts - Real-Time - Service Status - Transit properties: - type: Documentation url: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/alerts/ - aid: chicago-transit-authority:gtfs-feed name: CTA GTFS Schedule Feed description: >- CTA publishes a GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) schedule feed covering the physical layout, stop locations, and static schedules for the entire CTA bus and L train system. The feed is a downloadable ZIP archive that conforms to the GTFS reference and is updated when CTA service changes. image: https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg humanURL: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/gtfs/ baseURL: https://www.transitchicago.com/downloads/sch_data/google_transit.zip tags: - GTFS - Schedule - Static - Transit properties: - type: Documentation url: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/gtfs/ - type: Feed url: https://www.transitchicago.com/downloads/sch_data/google_transit.zip - type: DataGov url: https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/cta-system-information-developer-tool-gtfs-data - type: Transitland url: https://www.transit.land/feeds/f-dp3-cta - type: ChicagoDataPortal url: https://data.cityofchicago.org/Transportation/CTA-System-Information-Developer-Tool-GTFS-Data/sp6w-yusg common: - type: LinkedIn url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chicago-transit-authority - type: Website url: https://www.transitchicago.com/ - type: Portal name: CTA Developer Center url: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/ - type: TermsOfUse url: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/terms/ - type: PrivacyPolicy url: https://www.transitchicago.com/privacy/ - type: APIKeyApplication url: https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/traintrackerapply/ - type: ChicagoDataPortal url: https://data.cityofchicago.org - type: SystemMap url: https://www.transitchicago.com/maps/ - type: Newsroom url: https://www.transitchicago.com/news/ - type: ContactUs url: https://www.transitchicago.com/contactus/ - type: JSONLD url: json-ld/chicago-transit-authority-context.jsonld - type: Spectral url: spectral/chicago-transit-authority-spectral.yml - name: Features type: Features data: - name: Real-Time Train Arrivals - name: Real-Time Bus Arrivals - name: Train Run Locations - name: Bus Vehicle Locations - name: Route and Stop Directories - name: Customer Alerts and Service Status - name: Planned Outage Notifications - name: GTFS Static Schedule Feed - name: API Key Issuance - name: Open Chicago Transit Data - name: UseCases type: UseCases data: - name: Rider-Facing Mobile Apps - name: Trip Planners and Routing - name: Real-Time Arrival Displays - name: Service Disruption Notifications - name: Schedule Visualizations - name: Accessibility Tooling - name: Smart City Dashboards - name: Multimodal Transit Apps - name: Research and Open Data Analysis - name: Standards type: Standards data: - name: GTFS - name: GTFS-Realtime (consumed via partners) - name: REST - name: JSON - name: XML maintainers: - FN: Kin Lane email: kin@apievangelist.com